Featured Resources
Colorado Launches State Medicaid eConsult Platform
On February 1, the Colorado Department of Health Care Policy and Financing (HCPF) launched the Colorado Medicaid E-Consult platform. This platform will promote HCPF’s mission to improve healthcare equity, access and outcomes for their patients. The eConsult platform will allow Primary Care Providers (PCPs) to communicate electronically with specialty providers, allowing PCPs and specialty providers…
Read MoreHIV Care Meets Telehealth: a Review of Successes, Disparities, and Unresolved Challenges
Telehealth adoption in HIV care delivery in the USA has been successful. Despite this success, racial minority groups, older adults, and individuals with low telehealth literacy face remaining challenges. A lack of broadband access, compatible devices, standardization, and government regulations of telehealth in HIV care contribute to poor patient-provider experience and utilization. New approaches to…
Read MoreColorado Chooses Safety Net Connect’s Enterprise eConsult Platform for Statewide Medicaid Initiative
The eConsult initiative advances Colorado’s mission for equitable, accessible, and improved healthcare outcomes for Health First Colorado members. Business Wire reports on August 29, 2023 06:00 AM Eastern Daylight Time NEWPORT BEACH, Calif.–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Safety Net Connect (SNC), a leading provider of advanced virtual care solutions, has been selected by the Colorado Department of Health Care Policy &…
Read MoreImplementation of E-Consults in an Integrated Health System for a Value Population
Optimizing Telehealth and E-Consult in Cardiovascular Care
Before the COVID-19 pandemic, telehealth use in cardiovascular care was limited. Challenges included payment model changes, privacy concerns, patient-clinician relationship impact, technology limitations, and potential disparities.Telehealth’s adaptations during the pandemic have the potential to enhance cardiovascular care and equity, but ongoing optimization is vital. Clinician-to-clinician or clinician-to-facility platforms, include asynchronous (“store and forward”) data transmission,…
Read MoreIncorporating E-Consult into Telehealth Strategy
The expansion of telehealth during the COVID-19 pandemic wasn’t a temporary response. It was a result of changing patient behavior, expectations, and advancements in technology.The decreased availability of neurologists, especially in rural areas, and long waiting hours highlight the shortfall of neurologists that will increase to 19% by 2025. The medical community needs to adapt…
Read MoreE-Consult Effectiveness in Women’s Health
In a study of e-consult and gynecology, 7042 referrals were made in a 10 month study period. After exclusion of referrals to colposcopy and the early pregnancy clinic, 4738 e-referrals remained. Of these, 1013 referrals (21.4%) were triaged for an e-consult. One hundred and forty-seven patients (14.5%) with an initial e-consult were re-referred within 6 months for the same condition.…
Read MoreThe Practice of Psychiatric E-Consultation: Current State and Future Directions
This article affiliated with Harvard Medical School presents a narrative review of the existing literature on psychiatric e-consultation. The review aims to provide guidance on psychiatric e-consult practice and suggest future research directions. The review highlights the benefits of psychiatric e-consults, including improved access to specialist guidance in mental health care and primary care provider…
Read MoreTelehealth Cuts Health Care’s Carbon Footprint and Patient’s Costs
UC Davis and four other University of California health care systems and doctors used telehealth to serve their patients and tracked this data over the first two years of the pandemic. The video visits that took place saved substantial time, carbon emissions, and transportation costs. These savings included eliminating the need to commute 53,664,391 miles –…
Read MoreImproving Primary Care Access to Respirologists Using E-Consults
The Champlain Building Access to Specialists through E-Consultation (BASETM), a secure online platform that allows primary care providers to ask a clinical questions to different specialty groups with the expectation the specialists will respond within 7 days, conducted respirology e-consultations from January 2017 through December 2018. Each e-consultation was categorized by types of questions asked by the provider…
Read MoreThe Role of Telehealth in the Medical Response to Natural Disasters
In January 2023, California faced record-breaking precipitation which put additional strain on an already overburdened health care system. The advantages of using telehealth during natural disasters are presented by Brendan Carr, MD, Associate Dean of Healthcare Delivery Innovation at Jefferson (Philadelphia University and Thomas Jefferson University), and Nicole Lurie, MD, Massachusetts General Hospital, authors of a 2018 JAMA…
Read MoreCenter for Medicare & Medicaid Services Announces Increased Flexibilities in Medicaid E-Consult Reimbursement
On January 5, 2023, CMS published a State Health Official letter clarifyingpolicy on reimbursement for interprofessional consultation services inMedicaid and CHIP. The letter outlines that interprofessional consultation isa distinct, coverable service in Medicaid and CHIP, and that payment can bemade directly to consulting providers. This welcomed change will bringclarity to states in adding interprofessional consultation…
Read MoreE-Consult in addiction medicine: An initiative in COVID lockdown
This article highlights the use of a mobile e-consult platform initiated by the Centre of Addiction Medicine in India, in light of the need for substance use services during the COVID-19 lockdown. The mobile e-consult platform was found to be a promising method to serve patients with substance use disorders, as it enabled providers to easily transmit cases and queries to specialists. Specialists received…
Read MoreCenters for Medicare and Medicaid Services Support for E-Consult Reimbursement
In December, the Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC) and Virginia Medicaid (Department of Medical Assistance Services) met with the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services to discuss Medicaid’s payment policies with a focus on new concerns that have been raised in some states about the ability of Medicaid to provide a federal match for…
Read MoreClinical Effectiveness of an Outpatient Multidisciplinary Chronic Pain Management Telementoring Service
The objective of this study was to assess the effectiveness of a Pain E-Consult Program (PEP), a multidisciplinary telementoring service based on the Extension for Community Healthcare Outcomes (ECHO) model to reduce opioid use in the outpatient setting. A PEP was associated with greater reductions in morphine milligram equivalent (MME)/day compared with usual care despite similar rates…
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